I know... I should make up my mind which chord to use! Seriously, with my fingers now set in the C chord, switching to the Fmaj7 is a piece of cake - just shift your ring and middle fingers up a string.

But the notes and the chord diagram show a much more comples Fmaj7 - in fact it would be easier for me to do the full F than the one in the diagram (an F with the top E string played open - presumably the thumb holds down the bottom E string)

Sometimes the notation software I use doesn't allow me to put the same chord I'd like into the notation. Go with the text on this one! If you play a regular C chord, then just move your middle and ring fingers up one string and you'll have the Fmaj7. It is a good, easy way to do it. And by the bye, I do use my thumb on the low E.

To anyone who knows but in particular to David Hodgson, how do you play the chorus of Wild World (where there are the two palm muted notes and then the four sixteenth notes / semiquavers) as David does on the MP3 audio file? The audio can be found on the archive website. When David plays it, he does something to the fourth semiquaver chord, lowering it somehow, that isn't noted in the text of the lesson. It makes the whole song sound much better and is included in the real song. Hoping that someone can tell me - and that I made sense - even though the lesson was posted seven years ago

Many thanks for the lesson and all others, by the way. They're really great!

So I just realised that each post must be moderated before showing up - sorry for the double post...and the triple post that this makes it. I'm still a huge noob to this particular message board :O Anyway, thought I'd give the link for the audio file and text lesson so that it becomes clearer what I'm talking about. Both need to be loaded from an archive, so they take time to come up.

The audio file (another one shows it better but I can't find it, so this will have to do):

I'm assuming that you're talking about the last sixteenth note (semiquaver) on the G chord, right? That's simply a very old (and used by everyone) guitar trick of getting ready for the next chord! On the last upstroke of G, I've taken off my fingers to be ready for the next chord coming up (the F or Fmaj7, depending on how you want to play it) and as a result, the high note you hear is the open high E string. This works because adding the E turns the G chord temporarily into G6, which serves as an acceptable substitution in this case.

Also, since I'm catching only the three (or four) highest strings, three of them are open anyway for the G chord.

Lifting a finger off a string when using open position chords is something that all guitarists do and adds a bit of flavor to the playing. Especially on G, C, D, Am and Em chords. You should experiment with it and see how you like it.

Hope this helps and welcome to Guitar Noise, by the way. I look forward to seeing you around on the Forum pages.

Yeah, that definitely helps. Doing it with the G chord sounds just right. However, I'm having trouble making it sound good for the others you mentioned, like C and D. Could you give me the positions where your fingers should be (if anywhere) for the last semiquaver of the C chord, for example, like you have with the G? I think I'll understand if I see it done with another chord Thanks for the help, and for the prompt response!

My apologies - I didn't mean that you needed to use this technique for the other chords in this song, but rather that it was a good technique to practice because there are a lot of places where it does sound good.

In Neil Young's Heart of Gold, just to pick an example, the little guitar lick right before the line "...and I'm getting old..." is an open position C chord that is then very quickly changed into Cmaj9 simply be taking the index and middle fingers off the strings to get the open notes (x30000) and then the fingers are put right back on again.

In Wild World, you also see this technique used in the Cmaj7 in the verses (shown in "Example 2" in the archived text). Actually the Cmaj7 (x32000) is just a sixteenth note in duration before the index finger is hammered on to the chord, making it an open position C chord again.

Bottom line is that if you hear somebody doing something interesting to a chord, the chances are likely it involves a simple variation of the basic chord, usually created by opening a string or adding a note with a free finger.